| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: done or spoken by the light of this newly-acquired knowledge; the latter is
generally called 'knowing' rather than 'learning,' but the word 'learning'
is also used; and you did not see, as they explained to you, that the term
is employed of two opposite sorts of men, of those who know, and of those
who do not know. There was a similar trick in the second question, when
they asked you whether men learn what they know or what they do not know.
These parts of learning are not serious, and therefore I say that the
gentlemen are not serious, but are only playing with you. For if a man had
all that sort of knowledge that ever was, he would not be at all the wiser;
he would only be able to play with men, tripping them up and oversetting
them with distinctions of words. He would be like a person who pulls away
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: temples stood the altar whereon the fire burned eternally, and
before it were a hog-backed block of black marble of the size of an
inn drinking table, and a great carven stone shaped like a wheel,
measuring some ten feet across with a copper ring in its centre.
All these things I remembered afterwards, though at the time I
scarcely seemed to see them, for hardly were we arrived on the
platform when I was seized and dragged to the wheel-shaped stone.
Here a hide girdle was put round my waist and secured to the ring
by a rope long enough to enable me to run to the edge of the stone
and no further. Then a flint-pointed spear was given to me and
spears were given also to the two captives who accompanied me, and
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: two chairs are but as islands. One table is for actual work, one
close by for references in use; one, very large, for MSS. or proofs
that wait their turn; one kept clear for an occasion; and the fifth
is the map table, groaning under a collection of large-scale maps and
charts. Of all books these are the least wearisome to read and the
richest in matter; the course of roads and rivers, the contour lines
and the forests in the maps - the reefs, soundings, anchors, sailing
marks and little pilot-pictures in the charts - and, in both, the
bead-roll of names, make them of all printed matter the most fit to
stimulate and satisfy the fancy. The chair in which you write is
very low and easy, and backed into a corner; at one elbow the fire
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